Granny’s Home- Aaitar Ghar

Granny’s Home- Aaitar Ghar

Summer vacation is almost over for most of the schools in Assam. Now-a-days children are seen frequenting malls and shopping complexes, watching movies and lunching or dining with friends. My generation got a different taste of life while growing up. Come summer vacation, parents escorted their children to the grandparents or their aunts-uncles homes. A visit to any other Indian city only arose if they had relatives, otherwise it was off radar.

My Aaita’s (granny's) home was an old traditional Assam-type house with eaves and gable on the rooftop and a large verandah in the front with 2 more houses sharing the same compound but with no fences and walls. Its wooden pillars stand tall and strong holding the entire house together even today. It was at this verandah that my ears were forcibly pierced by my Aaita as I vehemently resisted all attempts by my mother, aunts and neighbourhood mahis (maternal aunts) to catch hold of my flying arms and legs.

Grannies of the 80s and 90s especially the ones with missing front rows of teeth (upper, lower or both) had a mortar-pestle for pounding tamul-paan to a chewable paste. The khundona, as we called it, Aaita’s khundona to be precise, was a wooden piece attached with a string to a tiny copper spoon along with an iron pestle.  Betel-nut cutting/ cracking is not an easy task and only an experienced and expert pair of hands can crack the nut while conversation centred on a topic among granny and her pals. The betel-nut cracker was a different tool altogether. It had slightly curved, sharp edge. After it was cleaned, the hard to crack arena nut, betel leaves and lime was kept in a betel nut box which was granny’s most prized possession. As a child, my cousins and I took great delight to pound the mixture. We pounded it for her in exchange for a handful of the mixture as we watched each other’s lips turn red with the juice.

Aaita’s achaar still makes me drool. Mango, olive, berry pickles were preserved in the traditional boyams (ceramic white and brown jars). Every time there was a craving for pickle while at Aaita’s place, the cousins would latch the door from inside while another one would be watchful of the comings and goings within the house. The pickle hurriedly yet stealthily, minus any conscience of guilt, scaled down the food pipe into the greedy, naughty, not-so-large stomachs of Aaita’s grandchildren. Every time we came, we raided the room where the pickle was stored. Probably she knew the little mischief her not-so-innocent grandchildren committed at the household but we were never reprimanded by her or by our parents. Mass produced pickles available in the markets are very oily, spicy and salty and is of no match to Aaita’s pickles. The very thought of Aaita’s achaar salivates my mouth.    

Dheki- the wooden foot mortar and pestle for pounding rice in Assam was next to the bhoral (granary for storing rice after the harvest). In the famous works of Laxminath Bezbaruah’s Burhi Aair Xadhu, Tejimola’s story is soul shattering where the protagonist is pounded alive in a dheki by her cruel and wicked step-mother.  Stories aside, in real life the dheki was a magnet for the child within me. Not that it was an attractive looking equipment but I derived simple pleasure by pressing one end of the dheki using my right foot while my other foot balanced the body on the ground. On the other end of the dheki the rice powder would be checked at regular intervals and scooped out of the hole when it turned into a fine powder.

I was as curious as a cat to check what all was stacked inside the bhoral and the child in me would try to find out the door so that I could sneak inside the granary. One had to bend one’s body or lie flat on the ground to peep or creep inside it. The house-cats (there were too many) often guarded the granary for the mouse and other rodents who frequented the granary at night. However, these cats had a very good sense of time and also about the summer vacation visits by the grandchildren of the house. At lunch time, all the felines would settle down in the kitchen where bell-metal plates, bowls and copper glasses were neatly laid down with a neat row of peera (traditional Assamese, low-floor, wooden seats used while eating meals). Drinking water in those days was lifted manually from ‘lined perennial well’ and was stored inside the house in brass-metal kalah (pitcher). Deota taught me very young not to go near a well (the list also included 4 other items- gas cylinder, blade, knife, electricity switch board). The kuwa (well) appeared large enough to a child’s eyes but last year when I went and saw the same well after many years, it appeared rather small.

The kitchen chouka or fireplace, before the villages got LPG/ CNG connections, was continuously fed with dry firewood. The pakghar (kitchen) was the most important segment of the Assamese household where the entire family sat together for their meals. There was neither a separate dining-room nor dining-table at my Aaita’s ghar. Food was served piping hot directly from the pots and pans.

Aaita-Koka’s living room had a Murphy Radio and a large blue-coloured iron sonduk (iron safe locker) along with an aalna- clothes horse. The empty treasure box still lies abandoned in the old house.

My Koka retired as a school teacher. He was instrumental in opening the first girl’s school in Hajo which is located very near to the famous Hargriv Madhab Temple. He was an animal lover too who was much loved by his cows and cats alike. After retirement, he was mostly to be seen by his grandchildren busy nurturing the bovines, taking them in and out of the cow-shed and into the fields, providing them with fodder, bathing his four-legged children or cleaning the cow-shed.

 The hurricane lanterns which ran on kerosene oil dimly lit up the house at dusk. My Koka and Aaita, like the wicks of the flickering oil lamps, passed away decades ago when I was still in primary-middle school but their memories has not gathered dust in the child’s mind who has grown many years ‘younger’ keeping the images of the sweet home alive all these years. Thanks to the countless visits my parents undertook in the summer vacation and other breaks to my Aaita’s ghar without which the childhood memories of my granny’s home would have been utterly blank like a slate.

Children, make the most of your time by visiting your near and dear ones especially your grandparents if they live afar or near instead of being glued to the screen. Create stories of your own by such association with the elderly so that you can share it when your time comes to pass it on.

By Karobi Gogoi Hazarika